Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
«The woman behind the wheel is the driver,» says the propaganda of the Moscow region transport.
From the poster, a stern, old-fashioned cold wave-laden woman behind the wheel looks into the distance. The nostalgic font, heavily associated with the USSR, Rodchenko’s iconography, the tone of voice (...)
Kirill Butylin, one of the first Russians to protest against the war on Ukraine by firebombing a military recruitment centre, today marks his 22nd birthday in pre-trial detention.
Butylin made the protest at the centre in Lukhovitsy, near Moscow, on 28 February last year – three days after the (...)
One year ago, Russian troops invaded Ukraine and began bombing peaceful cities. Before that, almost 9 years ago, Russia unleashed a war in Donbas and annexed Crimea. Tens of thousands of children and adults have already become victims of this carnage. Millions of people have abandoned their (...)
Sociologist Grigory Yudin was one of just a few Russian experts who believed in February 2022 that a military clash between Russia and Ukraine was inevitable. In an article published just two days before the invasion, Yudin predicted that a major war loomed in the near future, that Russians (...)
1991, Leningrad. The private office of the deputy mayor of the city. A reporter for the city’s television channel interviews a young official from Anatoly Sobchak’s team. In the frame — a man with a childish face in a white shirt. Behind him, you can see window blinds, a television, a table lamp, (...)
For a year now, Vladimir Putin’s regime has been killing Ukrainians, sending hundreds of thousands of Russians to their deaths, and threatening the world with nuclear weapons in the name of the insane goal of restoring its empire.
For us Russians who oppose Putin’s aggression and dictatorship, (...)
By the end of his long life, in 1910, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy had become the greatest public critic of the Russian Tsarist empire. By destabilising the Romanov autocracy through his writings, which amounted to more than eighty volumes, Lev Nikolaevich became Tsar Nicholas II’s most significant (...)
What is a trial for arson of a military recruitment center like? How is the Russian penitentiary system structured? Who helps prisoners in Russia? How are political prisoners different from regular prisoners? Do prisons rehabilitate? Why write letters to prisoners? Solidarity Zone members (...)
“Russians are dying out”, officials and parliamentarians tragically tell us from the rostrum. It would seem, indeed, that the birth rate is not rising, and that in April 2022 Russia recorded its lowest birth rate since 1943-1944. In January 2023, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin even (...)
In Russia, mounting authoritarianism and the wartime crackdown on dissent have hobbled trade unions. A five-day strike by food couriers showed that at least some workers are refusing to be muzzled.
In the latest episode of their growing union drive, food delivery workers across Russia staged (...)
The war in Ukraine has been followed by increased repression of the Russian left. The atmosphere was therefore tense during the annual memorial ceremony for two murdered socialists in Moscow.
UTRIKES The political schizophrenia that has characterised the Russian street scene since the fall of (...)
The brittleness of a top-down society
If we can characterize the situation in Russia in a few words, then let us say that the country is plunging into a state of catastrophe, the scale of which will be quite comparable to 1991, perhaps even surpassing those events. Let me remind you that the (...)
Ilya Budraitskis on how decolonization is being weaponized, why efforts to define what a “decolonization” program should look like are encountering serious obstacles, and why Russians need to figure it out for themselves.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the call for the (...)
From the telegram channel of Solidarity Zone, set up in Russia to support people persecuted for anti-war actions
Igor Paskar is the first to be tried [in Russia] for anti-war arson as a “terrorist”.
On June 14, 2022, Igor painted his face in the colours of the Ukrainian flag and threw a (...)
I get terribly annoyed and disillusioned when activists from Russia, who have nothing to do with FAS, talk about our big movement as a “leftist” movement or as a movement that has some kind of committee of chief activists. To me that’s not the case and it doesn’t work that way. We activists and FAS (...)
What roles were traditionally assigned to women in times of war and political turmoil? How could we turn patriarchal myths against the dominant gender and political order? Feminist and researcher Asya Neverova on the history of the question and the re-appropriation strategy
The gender agenda, (...)
While it might seem that the neoliberal consensus has broken in some Western countries, in the post-socialist space discourses of privatization and individualization are so strong that we can hardly speak about a crisis of the neoliberal order. It is even harder to imagine some radical change (...)
There are no “differences” for Kyiv and Moscow to settle in this war. One nation has tried to eliminate and subjugate another
Can any negotiations truly bring us closer to peace in Ukraine?
Those arguing that Russia and Ukraine should get around a table often complain about the lack of will to (...)
Almost a year into Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the state is cracking down ever harder on all signs of dissent. Today exiled or jailed, the Russians who spoke out against the war are key to rebuilding a peaceful, democratic society.
It can be confidently said that in the year since (...)
Russian activists have called for international days of protest on January 19 through 24, 2023 against Putin’s imperialist war in Ukraine and political repression in Russia. Thousands of Russian progressives, socialists, anarchists, and feminists have been arrested, hundreds jailed with long (...)
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